Vol. 75, No. 8, August 2002

Ten Steps for Building Confidence

by Ellen Ostrow

Recently, two women attorneys told me that they were criticized by a male partner for having a "confidence problem." One of these women is someone I experience as interpersonally powerful - she's articulate and extremely knowledgeable about her area of practice and has an excellent and clearly laid out career plan. She was baffled by her partner's feedback. The second woman, a good public speaker, had never received this kind of feedback before entering private practice. In law school, she'd been an excellent debater and participated actively in all her classes. She, too, was baffled to hear that she was perceived as timid.

Deborah Tannen echoes the experience of these women in her book, Talking from 9 to 5 - Women and Men in the Workplace: Language, Sex and Power, by asking, "How can so many talented women be seen by their senior managers as suffering from a lack of confidence?"

As a professional coach and psychologist, I find it more helpful to think of this issue in terms of what statisticians call the "level of confidence." And it is pertinent to men as well as women. In social science research, the experimenter is interested in determining whether her treatment had an effect. Even if a treatment appears to be effective in the particular sample of people being tested, can she conclude that the treatment is truly effective?

Scientists know that absolute accuracy is impossible. Instead, they choose a level of confidence: that is, the probability of being right in concluding that the treatment is effective. If the experimenter chooses to be very cautious in calculating her required level of confidence, she risks another kind of error - that of failing to detect the effectiveness of the treatment.

Many women lawyers appear to lack confidence because they require too high a level of confidence before holding forth. Often women won't say anything unless they are 100 percent certain they are correct because:

• They're not used to experiencing temporary setbacks. Partially, for some women, this results from not participating in competitive sports, in which loss isn't perceived as catastrophic. Without this experience, women feel like failures when they make a simple mistake.
• The consequences of mistakes are perceived as graver than for those their male counterparts commit. Many women lawyers feel open to harsh criticism, public humiliation, even job loss.
• They feel conspicuous. Women are usually in the minority in their firms, and the number of women partners is woefully small. Feeling as if their behavior is under constant scrutiny, women are particularly concerned about being caught off guard. To reduce their anxiety, they try to know everything before speaking up.

For these and other reasons, many women attorneys avoid the risk of error and require an extremely high level of confidence before going public with ideas.

But this caution exposes you to another risk - that you are perceived as insufficiently confident to be an effective attorney. In other words, you are just as likely to fail if you don't take risks.

Before concluding that success is impossible, consider the following 10 steps for building an acceptable level of confidence.

10 Steps for Building an Acceptable Level of Confidence

1. Recognize that no one knows everything. Regardless of how harshly a partner may criticize your errors, rest assured he's made plenty himself.

2. Experiment with presenting ideas about which you are less than 100 percent confident. See what happens when you express something about which you're only 95 percent confident. Give yourself a chance to learn that you can be successful without being 100 percent certain.

3. Take realistic, strategic, calculated risks. Study your surroundings for cues about the culture in which you find yourself. Observe how others act and interact. Assess the potential costs of being incorrect in the particular situation. Compare these to the costs of inaction. Remember that most firms have multiple backup systems - there's almost always someone else reviewing your work. In most cases, it's more likely that you'll be criticized than that a client will be hurt.

4. Have faith in your ability to perform. The success you've achieved thus far is not an accident. You wouldn't be where you are unless you were competent and knowledgeable.

5. Be willing to tolerate discomfort. Taking a risk means stepping outside your comfort zone. People who take risks are not fearless; they're people who have fear under control. If you weren't fearful, you wouldn't be taking a risk.

6. Be willing to learn on the job. Seek input from people unlikely to evaluate you. Remember, we always learn more from failure than from success.

7. Depersonalize your mistakes and the criticism they receive. Mistakes are a fact of life - just because you failed at one thing doesn't make you a failure.

When criticized:

• Take appropriate responsibility for your error without denigrating yourself or absolving others of their own responsibility.
• Try to keep in mind that your critic's anger is more likely a reflection of his or her current state of mind - feelings of frustration, pressure, being overwhelmed - than any enduring judgment of your competence.
• Try to separate the facts you're hearing from your own feelings about them. You made a mistake - that's all.
• Consider all of the temporary and situational reasons you might have made this error - don't attribute failures to your basic ability or intelligence.

8. Act with confidence even when you're not completely certain.

Don't:

• Apologize or ask for permission to speak.
• Begin with statements such as "You probably thought of this before, but..." or "I'm sorry to bother you, but... ."
• Hesitate, repeat yourself, or embroider your statements.

Do:

• Speak in a convincing, unconditional, authoritative manner.
• Be decisive and to the point.
• Make your statements strong and powerful.
• Claim authorship of your ideas by saying, "This is what I've come up with" or "I did the research and found... ."
• Project your voice.

9. Consider that taking risks builds resilience and self-confidence. The more you stretch yourself and succeed, the more confident you'll feel. Think of risk-taking as a necessary part of your professional training.

10. Remember what you stand to gain from taking a risk:

• Your work will not just be excellent but may also be recognized.
• You'll have the chance to receive credit for your accomplishments.
• You'll increase your visibility and therefore your chances of getting good assignments.
• You'll probably feel more confident than you did before.

Remember what you stand to lose from not taking a risk:

• You may be right, but no one will know it.
• Your work may go unnoticed or you may not receive credit for it.
• No one will know you're there.
• Perhaps worst of all - you may be accused of not having the "necessary confidence."

Wisconsin Lawyer